Hi there! My name’s Martin, better known as Fibro Jedi. Some of you may be following some of my characters’ fan fiction journeys, but I wanted to give you an idea of how long…and how deeply George Lucas’ Star Wars creation has impacted my own journey in life. Despite it being fiction, Star Wars has enabled me to be creative, meet new people and even affected some of my own life approaches. Please join me on this journey!

Star Wars Episode 1

Don’t hate on me but my Star Wars journey began with The Phantom Menace. The family I grew up in weren’t into anything that could be classed as geeky. My Mum read fiction, and both my parents watched the occasional period drama. So I had to find my own path. With the release of Star Wars Episode 1, I suddenly became intrigued in the SW Universe. At the same time a friend introduced me to an online chat site based on Star Wars ideas. As part of that, they had forums for written role-playing – in the old-style turn-taking model. It was in that community that I began writing within the SW universe – and it was there that Cor-Jhan Arcturus first appeared.

Cor-Jhan Arcturus was first created nearly half my lifetime ago!

Despite Star Wars being based on the traditional Good vs Evil mechanic, it was more complicated than that. Good people could become evil, or commit atrocities, and evil people could be redeemed. Subsequently watching the other movies started to get me thinking more about the detail of the universe, how nothing is certain – but above all, there is always hope.

Jedi Knight II and Jedi Academy

I just want to make a passing comment about these two games. Jedi Knight II (Jedi Outcast) was my first introduction to playing with others online. I was part of a clan, you could rise in the ranks by learning from, and fighting against more experienced players. I ended up in contact with a couple outside the game – and one of them came to my wedding – all the way from the States!

SWTOR

I had a long gap (many years) of not pursuing my interest in the Star Wars Universe – getting a job, changing jobs, getting married – and other life things got in the way. But when a friend introduced me to Star Wars: The Old Republic, my interest was rekindled. More than that, creating characters, seeing how they reacted in different situations, and ‘getting to know them’ actually sparked my desire to write again. Although I recreated Cor-Jhan Arcturus, it was the former slave Talitha’koum that I really enjoyed writing about.

Talitha’koum rediscovering her identity during the events of Knights of the Fallen Empire

When you write within a framework, you have to understand the rules of that framework. So I learned more about Star Wars technology, lore and even about different species in the galaxy. There’s still so much I don’t know!

That’s when you realise that when George Lucas created the Star Wars movies, they were really only scratching the surface of how the galaxy operated. It gave birth to different cultures, planets with different eco-systems and characters that traversed different walks of life. The movies were great, but they are a small percentage of what you can discover. SWTOR gave me insights into those, but I’ve still learned more on my own initiative.

Friends and a Blog

Even from the early days of my role-playing forum and Jedi Outcast, the fact that Star Wars exists has meant I have had contact with new people, some of whom have become real friends. Friendships have really blossomed in those I know through SWTOR. You don’t just know the characters, you can get to know the people behind them. And it’s those friendships and connections that keep me playing the games I do. Features of a game change over time, but when you make friends, that transcends what’s happening to the game. Had Star Wars not been created I wouldn’t have had those friendships and I wouldn’t have had the blog that I do today!

Finding Balance

The more I’ve looked into the Force, the more I have seen some of the good in the Empire and some of the bad in the Republic. No governmental system is perfect, and extremes of behaviour can be found in both the ‘good’ and the ‘evil’ people. Although originally aligning myself with the Jedi, now I find myself pitched between the two sides of the Force – within the shades of gray. Although I am a Christian and therefore I don’t let things like fiction affect my actual faith, I do try to strike a balance now: between ‘work’ and ‘play’, listening to both sides of an argument and not dismissing either side, avoiding extremes etc. Balance in the Force wasn’t achieved by wiping out all the Sith. The real world is made up of people from various cultures, religions (or none), languages and worldviews. We need all those held in balance to get along with other people – to not just tolerate them, but to show all humans have intrinsic value regardless of how they think. If we could all be accepting, the world would be a better place. The Force needs both sides represented to be in balance – the same should apply to what goes on here on Earth.

Chronic Illness and Gaming

The last awesome thing I’ll say is that running @FibroJedi has enabled me to connect with people who have Chronic Illnesses. But it has also helped me find (or be found by) people who are in a similar situation to myself – they have a chronic illness, but use gaming as a coping mechanism. This has been made possible because Star Wars exists. I would have picked up gaming (I used to play The Sims way back when, and Sim City) as a coping mechanism, but without online games, or communities, I wouldn’t have been able to connect person-to-person with people who share my life experiences. And that’s something that works in both directions.

TL;DR Star Wars and My Life

I’m in my 30s now as I write this. That means Star Wars and its various off-shoots, have been a major part of my life for more than half of it. From helping me pick up fan fiction writing, to coping with my pain, to making real friendships – Star Wars has been integral throughout that time. Criticise the movies all you want, none of the lasting value I have in my life comes from there. None of George Lucas’ legacy to me and my family derives from how well SW game developers do their jobs.

The greatest value is in the people and the communities that Lucas unknowingly sparked. Without him I wouldn’t feel an emotional link to the characters I write about. And without Star Wars, my Fibromyalgia would have been even more isolating than it is now. So to that end, I will be eternally grateful to what George Lucas started.

To say Star Wars changed my life would be cliché. If you’re any kind of Star Wars fan, the movies changed your life and you were never the same.

Maybe it would be more appropriate to say that Star Wars made me a stronger person. Loving Star Wars made me less afraid, gave me more confidence, and helped me care less of what others thought of me – all at a young, impressionable, need-to-please age of 12.

I wrote once about how I fell in love with Star Wars when I saw the Hoth scene in the Empire Strikes Back. Though that is true, I would say it’s The Phantom Menace (TPM) that caused me to become obsessed with Star Wars. I was raised on the generation where the Original Trilogy had been out for a while and I hadn’t seen the Special Edition in theaters because my parents weren’t interested. The only reason I had seen that Hoth battle was because my parents had decided to re-watch the Original Trilogy in preparation for Episode I being released. By the time TPM was out in theaters, I had watched the Original Trilogy and was prepared.

But it was such a different world from the Original Trilogy – and I loved it! I remember being so surprised when I learned people hated TPM. It was amazing! The Old Republic looked glorious, I loved the Jedi, the droids were so cool, and the music by John Williams was the icing on the cake.

However, there was a problem with me loving Star Wars so much. Even with these new Star Wars movies, Star Wars was something for “geeks”, “losers”, “nerds”, and whatever other labels kids in my middle school decided to tag on.

I wanted to be cool so badly. The year before TPM came out had been 6th grade and I had successfully navigated my way into the “popular” crowd. I had worked hard at it…I wasn’t naturally popular as I was awkward looking, read a lot of books, and – the worst – my parents wouldn’t let me go to the mall to “hang out”. So I worked hard to be in the popular crowd and tried hard to remain there, which basically meant abandoning my own things that I loved in order to be liked.

Then a fortuitous event (though not fortuitous at the time) happened right before I discovered Star Wars and saw TPM. I made a faux pas and the popular girls abandoned me. I was ruined.

You might laugh and, by all means, please do. It’s laughable now that I am older. But by laughing, we also forget what it’s like to be that age. We forget how cruel other children can be and how children have taken their life because of bullying. At that age, we have not yet quite built up the resilience that we have as we get older. By laughing and dismissing what happened, it takes away from my summer where I evolved into a different, stronger person because of my love for Star Wars.

After watching TPM nine times in the theater that summer, I took it upon myself to become like a Jedi. To me, they were the ultimate “good guys”. I kept a Jedi Journal where I wrote down anything that was, well, bad. If I pushed my brother, snapped at people, lost my patience, swore — anything even remotely Sith-like was written down and recorded. If I had fewer instances one week than the previous week, I felt a sense of personal satisfaction. This was before I knew about the Jedi Code – all I was going off of were Yoda’s words from TPM:

Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

As the summer crept toward fall, I knew I would have to make a choice. Do I choose Star Wars and know my chances of being popular were ruined? Or do I try to get back into the popular crowd?

My love for Star Wars won out.

I was bullied. I was ridiculed. Children made fun of me. You can read about it here. For a boy to like Star Wars was one thing, maybe slightly accepted, though they were still a geek. In my home town, for a girl to like Star Wars — she was a pariah.

But my love for Star Wars won out…and that’s an amazing thing at that age, especially for someone like me. I still look back at it as one of the hardest decisions of my life. I chose to go a different path. I found better, truer friends who didn’t mind that I loved Star Wars to a scary degree. I still remember walking to school with one of my new friends and telling her, “Hey Kate? I really like Star Wars.” And she went, “Yeah, they’re pretty awesome movies. My brother likes them.” And I said, “No, Kate, I mean, I really like Star Wars.” At which she laughed and kind of reiterated what she had just said. It was as if I was revealing to her who my latest crush was, I was that reverent about it.

Star Wars made me stronger. In a small way, I’m glad I was bullied because it taught me a priceless lesson: how to stick up for something you believe in and love.

Star Wars changed my life, cliché or no. I will always and forever be in debt to George Lucas for making these wonderful movies, especially returning to the Star Wars universe to create The Phantom Menace. So I tip my hat to you ol’ George, wish you a wonderful month and hope that wherever you are — you know your work is appreciated, loved, and life-changing.

A little over a year ago, I started a company with some friends of mine. We were feeling dispirited, frustrated, and annoyed. The Star Wars that we loved was being thrown under the landspeeder. And the man who had created that saga, George Lucas, had been tied to that landspeeder and was being dragged through the mud.

The common consensus was that Star Wars was better without Lucas, that he was a creator hated by his own fans. Except… we didn’t feel that way. We felt like something crucial had been lost, and we were confused why so many fans apparently hated the man who had created this exciting and rewarding saga in the first place.

So we decided to test our loyalty and commitment to the Star Wars of our childhoods and its creator. We started an apparel company and we called it George Shot First.

Our mission was simple: we wanted to offer a positive counterpoint to the “George Lucas is Satan” consensus and see if we couldn’t find some other people out there who might agree with us. We imbued our designs with the same sense of sly humor that we always appreciated in his films, whether it was the Star Wars saga or American Graffiti, Indiana Jones or even Radioland Murders. And we aimed the reticles of our satire at elements of the fandom whose hypocrisy and arrogance had sullied the reputation of our community.

In other words, we wanted to make a statement, and we were crossing our fingers that somebody would listen to it.

We’ve been absolutely overwhelmed by the response. Fans from all over the world picked up the gauntlet that we threw down and proudly proclaimed their admiration and respect for Mr. Lucas. They were as relieved as we were to discover they weren’t alone, that there were others out there who also felt as they did. We may have started this company to make a statement, but in the process, we’d actually managed to build a community.

Not everyone who joined our merry band had come to their fandom the same as us–some of us were fans of the films, others gravitated to the books, the video games or the graphic novels–but we all realized that without George Lucas, this wonderful galaxy full of stories wouldn’t exist and that both our childhoods and adulthoods would have been all the poorer for it.

For me personally, the works of George Lucas have been vital touchstones in my life. His films have been some of my most reliable guides in helping to understand the world and my place in it. And as it has evolved, so have I; its growth and expansion mirrored my own.

I first discovered Star Wars as a kid in middle school, and I immediately gravitated towards Luke Skywalker. I recognized in him all my yearnings for adventure and purpose, for an escape from the normal and mundane. Luke’s integrity and honesty, his humility and stubborn incorruptibility were traits I aspired to attain. The promise of The Force spoke to me in a way real-world religion never had; the idea of everything being connected as if by invisible strings and we merely needed to reconfigure our brains, to “unlearn” what we had learned, to reach out and pluck those strings. We could play reality like a musical instrument.

In high school and college, I saw the prequels, and in them I recognized Anakin as a new side of my personality emerging during those teenage years. I, like Anakin, felt disrespected, inferior, and frustrated at my own shortcomings and others’ expectations of me. I also saw in Anakin my darker, baser emotions, and realized the danger in giving into them. Anakin’s struggles were my own as I sought connections with others and understanding of a world that was becoming more complicated and frightening. Watching Anakin fail, I saw where I must succeed, where I needed to avoid his pitfalls to overcome my own limitations.

At various times in my life, the Star Wars films have been my most reliable resources for getting through trying times and inspiring me to move forward rather than take the easy way out and remain in one place. And at times, George Lucas’ other films have also spoken to these needs.

In THX-1138 I see my own struggles played out onscreen. Individualism or conformity? Fitting in at the expense of one’s own desires or coping with the dangers, loneliness and isolation inherent in being separate? There are arguments for and against both approaches, and that film has helped me understand where and how I need to find balance.

And then there’s American Graffiti, which always reminds me of the importance of change, risk and ambition. It’s easy to stay in one place, to be complacent and comfortable. But it’s far more rewarding to challenge yourself and strike out for parts unknown. Maybe you’ll fail, but you’ll also learn along the way. Without American Graffiti to inspire me, I’m not sure I would have made some of the risks I’ve made in my life, risks that in hindsight were so integral and so important for my development.

So while I’d like to thank George Lucas on behalf of everyone at George Shot First, I also need to thank him on behalf of myself. His films have both inspired and challenged me; they have excited my senses, stoked my imagination, and yet also forced me to look at myself in the mirror and wonder how I could become a better version of me. His films have sustained me more than any mere entertainment could ever accomplish; his characters, his philosophies, and his ideas have enriched my life in ways too many to even conceive. Without his artistic influence in my life, I honestly shudder to think of the kind of person I might have become.

And finally, I’d like to thank YOU as well. If you’re here reading this, it’s probably because you are also a fan and you might have experienced similar sensations upon being exposed to George Lucas’ work. Without you, we would be alone in the wilderness, yelling to an audience that would not and could not hear us.

It’s so important to continue showing our respect and admiration for the individual whose artistic contributions have made such a difference in so many lives. And if we’re all loud enough, who knows? Maybe he’ll even hear us.

Michael O’Connor is a member of George Shot First, an apparel company dedicated to championing respect and admiration for George Lucas. Please join us by visiting our website (www.georgeshotfirst.com), liking us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/georgeshotfirst) and following us on Twitter (www.twitter.com/georgeshot1st). You can support our cause by purchasing any t-shirt or hat from our website. Be sure to take advantage of our special May the 4th Sale all day Thursday, May 4th and Friday, May 5th!

Everything’s half off! No, I kid. Only one thing is half off, and that’s Maul himself.

What I mean is that the Star Wars Holy Month is on us again, the month I’ve nicknamed Maul (because single-syllable M names are tough to come by and Marrch was obvious for Darth Marr). And ever since Empire Strikes Back established it as such, it’s an exciting month full of exciting things for Star Wars fanatics.

So not wanting to let my loyal following down, I’ve put together some exciting events for you myself. Well, they excite me. “RebeLibrarian, being ranted at by you isn’t quite enough to get me excited.” Sorry, sweetheart. See if this is!

First, I’ve arranged a series of guest bloggers to talk about different Star Wars topics throughout the month! If my ranting can’t excite you, then perhaps theirs will! Muahahaha… Anyway, five guest bloggers sprinkled throughout the month will touch on various subjects, some of which will be a surprise even to me and at least one of which will be a reading list to help you decide what to read instead of Zahn’s latest Disney canon offering ;)

Second, it’s the second ever Thanksgeorging Day, and it falls on the 25th this year. The overwhelming appropriateness of this cannot be overstated. It’s the day that Star Wars turns 40. Four decades of the Wars! Unbelievable. I’ll be doing my major holy month post on that day, including the text of the thank you note I’ll be sending Mr. Lucas. I encourage you all to send your own thank you notes — his birthday is also this month, on the 14th, so try to mail cards in time to reach him either for his own birthday or for his greatest creations. You can find a mailing address and some stock letters for inspiration here.

On a final, lighthearted note, I’ve invented something called Palparolling, which I think you’ll want to tell all your friends about. How does Palparolling work? Well, I’ve put together a brief instructional video; watch here.

So as you can see, while it’s always a good time to be a Star Wars fan, it’s an especially good time to be one who follows my blog, too! Why not invite your friends?

Who doesn’t love a good conspiracy theory? I do. With my site (www.rebelibrarian.com) focused on canon, I don’t often get to indulge myself with theorizing, so this chance to write about some delicious conspiracies is super exciting. Here are three conspiracy theories drawn from and proven by events from the films only. Please enjoy!

Jocasta Nu erased Kamino from the Archive for Count Dooku.

This discarded subplot drives me insane — it’s the most interesting thing in Episode II, but it’s never mentioned again. Obi-Wan asks who could have deleted Kamino from the archives: he considers it so impossible, it didn’t even occur to him that it could have been done on purpose. Yoda calls the puzzle “dangerous and disturbing,” but never does anything about it. But the answer is obvious.

In a deleted scene, Jocasta Nu finds Obi-Wan ruminating on a bust of Count Dooku. After…

A guest blog from Adam about the Star Wars side of the holiday season!

Whether you want the Light Saber with a glass tube or your own personal Millennium Falcon, letting out a Wookie War Call is only half the fun of a Star Wars Christmas. Here are three ways to go to sleep the night before and wake up Jedi ready to open your gifts and have a fun themed photo with your friends or family. All of these images came from and the products can be found at http://www.crazyforbargains.com.

A Wookiee Wake Up.

If you want to tear through your gifts, there’s no better way than dressed as a Wookiee. If you combine the faux-fur Chewbacca Star Wars bathrobe with a pair of faux-fur bear slippers, you will be ready to rip into your gifts and war call your way into Kashyyk Christmas. You’ll love posing while ripping apart a gift in your cool new Chewbacca bath robe.

A Dark Side Christmas Morning

If you’re not such a fan of the Wookiee wake up, or sunlight in the morning, try celebrating with a Darth Vader dark side morning. By combining the Darth Vader hooded bathrobe with these fun lounge pants for men or women and a black tshirt, the dark side can be the right side this holiday season. What better way to scare the person who bought you that gift you really didn’t like than dressed as the original bad guy himself.

Let the War Begin.

If your house is like mine, then there is a definite war going on when it’s time to open gifts. To create a fun photo for the holidays and also have a cool way to open gifts, you can try the hooded Jedi Robe and if you have another person, get them the Hooded R2D2 robe for a fun in flight photo. If there are still more people, you can throw in the Storm Trooper Hooded Robes, Yoda with Ears, and also a Darth Vader if someone wants to steal a gift for the photo. Not only do these robes make the perfect gift, but they will create a holiday photo everyone on Facebook will love and something you will all remember. You could have R2D2 in front steering everyone with the Storm Troopers to his side. The Jedis behind or in front kneeling down and Vader holding a gift and a Lightsaber defending his stolen gift.

If you have a Star Wars fan in your house, he or she probably has every collector’s item and fan gear available. If you want to get him or her something they’ll love, actually use and that can make an awesome holiday photo, the Star Wars robes are the perfect solution. They’re unique, fun and functional which is why they make the perfect present for the holidays, a thinking of you gift, or even for a birthday.